Historical Guests

Portofino, a World apart

13 June 2009

Cesare Esposito worked a great deal in Liguria.

Cesare Esposito, born in Naples, worthy artistic heir to Vincenzo Gemito, Gaetano Esposito, and Edoardo Dalbono, lived and worked a great deal in Liguria and in Portofino and Santa Margherita Ligure in particular. As his great friend and admirer Enzo Cochetti wrote: “Cesare Esposito is a complete painter; his methods are very effective, his technique, perfect and his possibilities infinite. Attentive contemplator of nature, he found in the riviera a source of inexhaustible stimulus for his talents. Delicious waters, dense and just tones, cut with taste, sustained with effective contrasts of light and shade; wide sweeping ligurian landscapes, succinct, with exact observation“.

In particular we remember the port with the fishing boats of turn of the century, Santa Margherita Ligure, the boats pulled up on dry land, and the nets which were the dominant motif of his inspiration and characterize his work in an original way. He was a sincere painter and the charm of his art was the effect of its simplicity. He portrayed what he saw through the prism of his sensitivity and he knew how to transform his understanding of life into the world of form and colours. In many houses in Santa Margherita Ligure we find oil canvases and pastels of this artist who loved Santa Margherita Ligure and lived therefor a long time in the Grand Hotel Miramare. In the Miramare, the pride of the hospitality of Santa Margherita Ligure to foreigners, there is a great oil painting exhibited, the work of Esposito.

For these reasons Portofino remembers this painter with admiration and affection.